International Talk Like a Pirate Day: Accidental Pirates
by Marathon Zack 140.6
Summary: Shenny Pirate Day entry. A teleporter accident leaves Sheldon and Penny as pirates for a day. Leonard-bashing. [Sheldon x Penny]


**A/N: Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day! I'm amazed I got this written in time for the actual day, but here it is — My entrance into the Shenny ITLPD Challenge. For anyone interested in joining, the challenge rules (from the fabulous Darkly Dreaming) are below:**

Pirata Codex:  
It has to be a minimum of 1k, but no max. Write as much as you like.  
Must prominently feature Sheldon and Penny, but does not have to be shippy if you want a wider audience.  
Since we're starting a bit late, we'll extend the deadline to the end of September (but if you still don't get it done before then, post it whenever! No pressure!)

Only dead men tell no tales, so look lively and remember to have fun!

* * *

"Moonpie, are you sure you know what you're doing?" asked Penny for the thousandth time that morning.

Even for Sheldon, the mass of computers, screens, and sciency-looking equipment looked too much for any one person to handle by themselves. And _she_ certainly didn't have a clue what any of the stuff did, or how to work it.

"Of course I am sure," replied Sheldon for the equally thousandth time.

They were in Sheldon's lab at Caltech, with Sheldon working on the teleportation device he claimed was almost ready for its first test run. Penny was perched up on one of the counters just watching him, probably (certainly) being more of a distraction than a (not so) silent moral support.

After Sheldon had finally won his Nobel Prize for String Theory, he had decided to take back up a more practical project he'd abandoned in graduate school after getting stalled: teleportation. With several more years of experience since he'd last worked on it, he'd had some great breakthroughs when he looked back over his research, and really thought he could make it work this time.

The project required a lot more hands-on involvement than his String Theory research ever had, but Sheldon had taken to the practical aspects of the project quite enthusiastically, much to his work friends' surprise. When he told Howard he was taking up the project, his friend had been more than happy to help him out with the engineering aspects of the project. Raj had moved back to India a few years earlier, where he was in charge of an astrophysics department at a University there, but when Sheldon had mentioned he was reinvestigating his teleportation project when they saw Raj in Stockholm, Raj had been excited for him.

Leonard, on the other hand, hadn't taken the new direction so well. When Sheldon hadn't asked for his help on any of the experimental physics side of the project like he had Howard on actually building the teleporter parts, he thought his best friend was abandoning him. In truth, Sheldon simply didn't need Leonard's expertise for anything in the project, and there wouldn't have been anything for Leonard to do, so Sheldon hadn't wasted either of their time asking him to do nothing.

But insecure as always, Leonard had taken it as a personal insult. Things also weren't helped along by the fact Sheldon had taken Penny as his plus one when he went to receive his Nobel Prize. Leonard of course knew his roommate had just taken her because it was a social obligation to bring a female with him, and he was nothing more than just friends with their blonde neighbor, but it still meant she was hanging on Sheldon's arm the entire trip, instead of on _his_ arm, as he'd've preferred. Despite the fact Penny had parried all his advances on her over the past several years, Leonard knew she'd one day come to her senses and be with him like she was destined to be. They were going to have smart, beautiful babies one day, regardless how imaginary Sheldon continued to insist they would be any time Leonard mentioned it.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Sheldon and Penny actually were together. Knowing the reactions of certain of their friends and family, they had decided to keep it private for a while, until they were both comfortable confronting all the reactions they were bound to get from such an announcement. And as Sheldon was Sheldon, and slow to adjust to the more physical side of dating, it wasn't hard to keep anyone from finding out, aided by the fact no one was looking for it in the first place. But they had finally reached a point where Penny thought they were almost ready to let their friends and family know they were a couple sometime in the upcoming months.

But until they were actually ready, Penny was happy to just hang out in Sheldon's lab as he tinkered with his latest scientific toys, as she was doing now.

Glancing down at her watch and seeing that it was well past lunchtime, she looked up and asked, "Is that thing going to be up and running to transport us to lunch anytime soon?"

Sheldon looked up at her with a 'you know better than that' look, and answered, "Penny, even if this _was_ nearly operational, it would take weeks or even months of testing to make sure it was safe for human use before it could actually be used. And even then, it would be restricted to more important things than teleporting you to the restaurant just down the street."

"Okay, okay," grumbled Penny, just as her stomach did the same. "I guess I'll just walk down there, then. And I know you don't like food in your lab, but you need to eat, so what do you want?"

"My Saturday sandwich, of course, Penny," replied Sheldon in his normal 'duh' tone, which Penny just rolled her eyes at as soon as he wasn't looking.

As Penny jumped down from her perch on the counter, her hand accidentally swept across the counter and hit a bolt that was lying there, and sent it flying across the room towards his machine. Before either of them even saw that it had happened, the chunk of metal's flight pattern took it straight through a glass tube, shattering it into a billion little pieces. Simultaneously, an arc of electricity flew through the now open gap, and a bright purple flash of light from the machine engulfed the entire ground floor of the building.

The next moment, as the light subsided and they could see again, Sheldon and Penny found themselves on a rough wooden floor, that was undulating beneath them. Sitting up and looking around them, they took in the wooden floor they were sitting on and the four wooden walls around them, along with the sparse amenities of the room and all general decor, and finally the motion of wherever they were, and simultaneously came to the same conclusion.

"We're on a ship!"

Penny scrambled up, wobbled slightly as a wave tossed them around, and then carefully moved to the door of the cabin. Opening the door just a crack she peeked out.

"It's a pirate ship!" she exclaimed, catching a glimpse of the large, black flag with a skull and crossbones on it.

"That's impossible, Penny, there's no such thing as pirate ships like this anymore," said Sheldon.

"Sure it's not just improbable?" asked Penny with a smirk.

"Very funny, Penny, but no. This is actually impossible," replied Sheldon. "After all, how would a wooden sailboat pose any threat to steel tankers twenty times its size?"

"Okay, okay," relented Penny, as Sheldon joined her by the door. "But you've got to admit that it sure looks like an old pirate ship."

At that moment, they heard a coughing noise from the door behind them. They walked over and pushed it open, finding a small bed inside, with a sick-looking man lying on it.

When he saw them, the man croaked out, "Oh good, I was hoping they would find a replacement for me."

"Replacement for what?" asked Penny, completely confused.

"For captaining this ship, of course," replied the man after another coughing fit. "That is what the crew sent you in here for, isn't it?"

"No," began Sheldon, before Penny cut him off.

"How we came about being on this ship is a rather long story that you probably wouldn't believe anyway," she said. "But what is this about needing to captain this ship?"

"Well, however you came to be on here, we could really use your help. This is a pirate battle reenactment, and I, the captain, am too sick to do my duties. And while on a real ship the duties would go to the first mate, it's not much of a reenactment if there's no captain on one of the ships. So I would be really grateful if you could do it, sir.

"And since this is a reenactment of an eighteenth century pirate battle, if you want your girlfriend to not be a pirate wench, you're going to have to make her your pirate wife. Unusual for a pirate, but it could happen. The crew knows what they're doing, so you just have to announce yourself to the first mate as the replacement captain, and he'll take care of the rest. All you have to do is be a face, and occasionally bark some orders basically. Can you do that, please?"

"Of course we can!" replied Penny before Sheldon would have a chance to open his mouth and be Sheldon. "Who is the First Mate, and do you have any pirate clothes we can change into?"

Five minutes later, Sheldon and Penny walked out onto the deck.

~TBBT~

Meanwhile, across the water, Leonard wasn't having such a good time.

Unbeknownst to Sheldon and Penny, when the teleportation machine had accidentally gone off, Leonard had been walking up the hall outside Sheldon's lab. He'd come to see if Sheldon happened to know where Penny was, since she hadn't seemed to be in her apartment when he knocked, and ever since Sheldon had started his teleportation project, she'd seemed to have been hanging out with him more and more. He expected that she thought if she were extra nice to Sheldon that she'd be able to use the machine for her own personal transportation once it was complete. She was going to be in for a rude awakening.

So when the machine had gone off, Leonard had gotten transported away as well. Only being a good distance away from Sheldon and Penny in the building, he _landed_ a good distance away, as well. On the rival pirate. Unfortunately for him, when he was quickly discovered down in the cargo hold before he'd even had time to look at his surroundings, and had no story as to how he'd gotten there, since he really didn't know himself, he'd been assumed to have been a stowaway, and thus quickly been forced into a stowaway's position; swabbie. Which meant scrubbing the deck, and any other menial jobs the crew could round up. It was either that, or the brig.

Leonard had just started scrubbing the deck, trying to figure out how he was going to get out of this predicament, when across the water he spotted two overly familiar figures on the other ship.

Across the calm water he could hear a high-ranking looking pirate announce to their crew, "Arrrr, matey's! This here be Captain Sheldon, and his pirate bride, Penny. Ye'll be obeying them same as ye would Captain Blackbeard, or ye'll be walkin' the plank! Now back to work, ye scallywags!"

As these words sunk into Leonard's brain (well, the early one's about Sheldon and Penny being captain and captain's wife), he saw Sheldon lean down and plant his lips in a very un-Sheldon-like way on Penny's, and Penny in a very Penny-like way wrap her arms around his neck and proceed to snog him without mercy. Leonard gawked at them, as Sheldon not only didn't run away screaming about needing Purell, he seemed to be matching Penny kiss for kiss.

Just as a great applause broke out over the other ship, a scolding broke out over Leonard from the boatswain standing unseen right behind him. The last thing Leonard saw before returning to his hands and knees to scrub the deck was Sheldon and Penny finally breaking apart, just to grab each other's hand and intertwine fingers.

Over the next few hours, every time Leonard chanced glances at the other ship, Sheldon and Penny always seemed extremely close; often holding hands, or Penny leaning into Sheldon's side with Sheldon's arm around her shoulder, or even locking lips and tangoing tongues a few times.

~TBBT~

As Leonard skulked and plotted on his boat, Sheldon and Penny were having a wonderful time on theirs.

It had taken Penny several minutes to convince Sheldon everything was going to be okay in this completely out of routine situation, but once Sheldon had embraced being a pirate captain, he'd done so very enthusiastically. Penny supposed it shouldn't have surprised her too much, given how enthusiastic he got with comic books and comic conventions and dressing up for Halloween. The crew, largely sci-fi and comic aficionados themselves, had readily taken to Captain Sheldon as well, and were having the grandest time under his command.

But the best part of all for Penny was that Sheldon had relented to properly playing the part of married pirate ship captain. It wasn't quite the same as officially announcing to their friends that they were together, but it was at least a first step in going public. And if she could convince him to keep up this level of pda when they did go public in Pasadena, she was going to be one very happy girl (not that she wasn't already when they were alone — eidetic memory was a very pleasant thing to have in a boyfriend).

After a while came the time for the simulated pirate ship battle, complete with cannons.

While the fights were all staged, and the cannons had no cannon balls in them, one disgruntled and jealous crewman was scrambling to find something to scare the man (and incidentally roommate) who'd stole his girl with. There weren't any loose cannonballs onboard, not that he could have lifted one anyway, but Leonard did manage to find several small metal pulleys that he tossed down the barrel after the gunpowder when no one was looking.

After Sheldon's ship had fired a volley, the ship Leonard was on fired. The pulley pieces ripped through the sail of Sheldon's ship like oversized buckshot.

As everyone on Sheldon's ship went into high alert and the First Mate radioed over to the other ship to see what had happened and call off the rest of the fight, Sheldon followed the trajectory of the impact back to its source cannon. And standing next to the offending cannon wearing a smirk that ought to be criminal, was none other than his homunculus roommate. Or now _ex_-roommate as he quickly corrected in his mind.

"Penny," he said casually to the blonde, who was stretched out on a large wooden storage box behind the wheel where Sheldon was standing, not actually steering the boat. Sheldon knew the First Mate had canceled any further volleys of the cannon variety, and he knew Leonard wouldn't risk setting off a cannon on its own without the cover of all the other cannons.

"Yeah?" replied the blonde, rolling over slightly so she could face Sheldon. Sunbathing pirate wives might not be too historically accurate, but when she got the chance to sunbathe, she was going to take it; it was still hard to get Sheldon to do anything outside, so she didn't get too many chances to get some sun.

"Doesn't that look like someone we know on the middle cannon?"

Penny squinted against the brightness of the sun as she looked over at where Sheldon had said. With a small gasp, she recognized Leonard.

"How did he get here?" she exclaimed.

"He must have been in the building when the teleporter went off," replied Sheldon. It was a mark of how far he'd come since starting to date Penny that he didn't say 'when you broke the teleporter'. "But since he was a substantial distance away from us, he got teleported that same distance away and landed on that ship."

"Do you think he's seen us?" asked Penny.

"Given the fact it was his cannon that shot through our sail, I'd say so. I'm guessing he's handling learning that we're a couple even worse than we predicted," replied Sheldon.

"Oh! I forgot that he could have seen all that!" exclaimed Penny. "Well, I guess our relationship is all in the open now. Or at least will be as soon as he gets cell reception."

At that moment, the First Mate walked up to them.

"We've called off all the fights, but they still don't know who fired the cannon with projectiles loaded into it."

"We do," replied Penny with a glare.

Before the First Mate could express his surprise, Sheldon added, "It's the short guy on the middle cannon. He isn't handling finding out Penny and I are together very well. Is there any way you could continue the sword fighting, and capture him and bring him back to this ship? It will make the reenactment look more real, and we can take care of him when we get back to shore. You're of course more than welcome to press charges, as well. And don't worry, he can't handle a sword to save his life. Or just don't have the other Captain let him have a sword."

"I'll see what I can do," replied the First Mate with a nod. "Do you think you can get a confession out of him, though, because else there's no way for us to press formal charges, and we'll have to have a full investigation. For safety, you know."

"Don't worry," replied Sheldon. "I don't think he'll _stop_ yelling about it."

Ten minutes later, the sword fight resumed. In addition to the regular capture of enemy pirates that was already planned as part of the reenactment, Sheldon's crew also captured Leonard, and brought him over kicking and screaming. They dragged him down to the brig and locked him up, for Captain Sheldon to do with as he saw fit.

Once the fight was over, and the reenactment was sailing back for port, Sheldon, Penny, and the First Mate headed down to the belly of the ship to confront Leonard.

As soon as Leonard saw the three of them walking towards his cell, he shouted, "How could you do this to me? You knew she was mine! And _you_! How could you be going out with _him_?"

"Did you shoot a cannon full of metal towards our ship?" asked Sheldon, completely ignoring Leonard's rant.

"Damn right I did! And you deserved it, too!" shouted Leonard. "Stealing my girl like that! I should have aimed at you, instead of the sail! You know the bro code, dude — we've certainly told it to you enough!"

"Yes, well, fortunately I'm only bound by the pirate code, and any agreements I sign. So in accordance with the pirate code, you're stuck in the brig until we get back to shore, and in accordance with agreements I have actually signed, I am enacting clause four, paragraph three of our roommate contract: 'If either party physically threatens the other, the threatened party may revoke the contract and retain control of the apartment'. You have a week to remove all of your belongings from my apartment."

As Leonard gaped at him, Sheldon, Penny, and the First Mate turned and walked back to the ladder to take them back up to the deck.

As they walked back into the Captain's quarters a minute later, Sheldon asked the First Mate, "Did you get everything you needed?"

The First Mate pulled his iPhone out from his shirt pocket. "That was plenty of evidence for us to prosecute him for endangering a ship full of people. Thank you."

The rest of sail back into port, the First Mate took Sheldon and Penny around and introduced them to all the rest of the pirates on the ship. By the time they'd reached dry land again, Penny had easily been convinced to join the crew on another reenactment soon, and Sheldon had nearly been persuaded to do it again as well.

As Sheldon and Penny walked back into Sheldon's lab a while later, where their adventure had all begun, Sheldon looked over at Penny and said, "Since I have a spare bedroom and am in need of a new roommate now, is there any chance you would like to be roommates with me?"

"On two conditions, Moonpie," replied Penny, leaning up to give him a peck on the lips. "One, you go captain a pirate ship with me again; and two, I'm not taking Leonard's old room. If I do this, we're doing it proper; I'm moving into your room with you."

Sheldon looked down at the ground, and noticed the bolt that had made this whole thing a possibility lying at his feet. He leaned down and picked it up, studying it for a few seconds, before looking back over at his girlfriend.

"Okay."

* * *

**A/N: So not actually a lot of ****_talking_**** like a pirate, but it at least has to do with pirates.**


End file.
